EVAPORATION (by Lisa Zaran)

I've left pens in a red rush behind me, full of words I meant to write. Scars on the soft edge of nouns, verbs I meant to give life to and forgot. Stories, once started, lost reason, as adjectives fell left and right. There were times I believed, I'm a thin woman now, my children stand on a dusty road, their witness-mouths twisted shut. Every night, I wish on a star. Oftentimes, the desert sky is dead in all its eloquence. I still whisper.